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Thursday, September 28, 2017

Sumpin New





































I didn't name this creation, because it is a commission build for a fellow from Cleveland, so I'll leave that to him.  However, 'city scape' came to mind after I commenced with the process of making it
different than others I've built, and looking at the shape of the headstock and the inlays.

Starting from the top working down and around, here's what makes up what has turned out to be a really cool guitar.  It looks good. It feels good, lightweight and comfortable. It plays very well with a soft and close action. And, it sounds great with strong warm bass and bright treble with a ton of sustain.

The headstock overlay on the African mahogany neck is a combination of East Indian rosewood and elevated Goncolo Alves with tuning machine recesses on the Alves side. A hand-fabricated bison bone nut separates the headstock from the rosewood fingerboard, which has pearl position markers and medium/medium gauge hand set and polished frets. The soundhole rosette inlay is a combination of twenty-six individually cut pieces of exotic wood, which were glued together, cut and shaped to fit the center recess of the three part design. The outer circles are thinner black composite strips. The bridge is made of hand fabricated rosewood with a bison bone saddle and ebony pins with abalone inlay, which anchor the Ernie Ball 10-46 gauge strings. Further down the top is another grouping of  wood pieces that carry out the 'city scape' design into the tailpiece, each being made up of eighteen individually assembled exotic wood pieces. The back and sides are mahogany as well, with narrow rosewood binding formed to separate and add strength to the joints, where the body pieces are glued together. A one-half-inch strip of ebony bordered herringbone walnut inlay runs along the spine of the back from the bottom of the tailpiece to the Wenge (when-gay) heel cap of the neck. You'll notice a carryover of the spine inlay into the other inlays, tying it all together.  The small heel cap is a combination of rosewood, redheart, zebrawood and wenge. Moving up the neck and finishing off this description are the Grover closed back geared tuners. The last photo is to show how I sometimes customize the interior without sacrificing any structural quality, by perforating the ladder-style back braces, and all bracing is scalloped and individually fitted to each design.

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